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in the dry summer season, whereby thousands of acres of fine timber are totally <br />ruined. <br />Obviously sentiments like these did not bode well for continued Ute presence in <br />Colorado. The white citizens of Colorado were being incited to remove the Indians, in order <br />that men like Pitkin (who had sizable investments in mining concerns whose development <br />was inhibited by Ute presence) could profit. Since the trouble with the White River Utes <br />represents one of the most shameless crimes any culture has inflicted upon another – the <br />denial to the Colorado Ute of their homeland, their forced removal to Utah, and their <br />subsequent degeneration – and due to the fact that the major events occurred in <br />northwestern Colorado. The inevitable happened, of course. <br /> The animosity between the Coloradoans and the Utes accelerated to such an extent <br />that the Utes rose up against Agent Meeker and the detachment of cavalry sent to subdue <br />them; the outcry against the Utes was terrible indeed. A Peace Commission to gather facts <br />was held in December of 1879, three months following the uprising, and though only one <br />Ute (Douglas a.k.a. Quinkent) was sent to prison for his part in the affair, the remainder of <br />the Uncompahgre and White River Utes were removed to Utah in 1881 by a detachment of <br />United States cavalry, the soldiers of Empire Builders flying the banner of Manifest <br />Destiny. A portion of the Southern Ute remained on a small reservation in southern <br />Colorado, but, except for these few Indians, the native people who had lived and hunted in <br />the state were removed from its borders by 1881, only 23 years from the beginning of the <br />gold rush. <br />Hunting and Trapping <br />In the 1820s trapper activity in the region began to pick up. It started as early as <br />1820 when Baptiste Brown (Jean-Baptiste Chalifoux) discovered Brown's Hole on the <br />Green River. There were also trappers in Rio Blanco country before the full development of <br />the fur trade. Among them were half-breed French trappers who worked for whomever paid <br />the best price (Athearn 1976). Thereafter, the William Ashley party was sent out by the <br />Rocky Mountain Fur Company from St. Louis in 1824 to trap the central Rockies -- <br />Wyoming, the Yampa Valley, Steamboat Springs, and Brown’s Hole (H.R.N.F. 1975:1-4). <br />They reached Brown's Hole on the Green in 1825. This year also marked the incursion of <br />Antoine Robidoux into west-central Colorado and up into Brown's Park, and the boom was <br />on. <br />In 1830, Ashley sold out to Henry Fraeb, Jim Bridger, Thomas Fritzpatrick, Milton <br />Sublette, and Jean-Baptiste Gervais. Fraeb and his party worked the Routt country in 1831, <br />but The Rocky Mountain Fur Company was dissolved in 1834 (H.R.N.F. 1975:1-4). <br />Fort Davy Crockett, often referred to as “Fort Misery,” was built in 1837 in Brown's <br />Park. It was constructed by Phillip Thompson and William Craig because so many trappers <br />wintered in the sheltered Brown's Park country where feed for the horses was plentiful and <br />38